Tuesday after year's Daily paintings done

Back to the paint. Love it ! Looked back at a couple more Dailies , here are the before and afters. Strange this process and I am unsure whether or not I should be doing this because the Dailies have been published on Pinterest and been pinned by others, so, what I am not convinced in what I am doing.

Essentially , if I view the Dailies as half hour sketches, I can live with them. If I look at them as paintings , I feel that there is more work to do. Interesting , well to me anyway. With all this in mind then don't make the decision to re paint the ones I don't rate as much, just go and get some more boards cut while I decide.


It's much easier to work back into paintings in oils, then if you don't like the rework, then you can just wipe it off. With the acrylics, they stick like glue and it's too late if you liked it better before.

Before

After

Before

After

This mornings work. Loved it .......today !

Loving these colours, pinky greys.

Monday after finishing a year of Dailies

Omg can't believe a year has gone by since I started the Dailies. Today's paint was to first revisit one of the Dailies to work back into it. I need to watch myself or else I can see me re painting the whole lot.But , in a way I can see a progression, I have more tonal awareness and some Of the DAilies seem a little, ' raw.'

This was the original

This was the re painted one !

This below is a picture of the back of the paintings I have done for the show at weekend. The paintings are on hardboard or thin Mdf, so I need to put a frame on, paint the backs with primer undercoat, put contact details on and string them with cord and mirror plates. All the jobs that are boring !

Back to the painting. Small one on paper so that I can demo to the Art group on Wednesday. Tones and glazing!

Not sure if I am going to carry on with the Dailies or not. Still enjoying them too much. It settled out at me being more happy with the more identifiable, figurative landscapes. The abstracts don't work as well with these paintings. Perhaps it's the size. Try bigger abstracts maybe. But for the moment happy in paint making a few new pieces but looking back and working back into the Dailies that I don't like as much. Try;

Painting gentler ones of the of the paintings that I think feel raw.

Try and remember that these are half hour instants therefore can't be perfect

Try and neutralise some of the colours to produce ( she says) some more sophisticated work

Try and make small ones directly from the Dailies.

I can never re paint the images I make. I never worry about other artists copying my work because I can't reproduce them myself. They go their own way. I often just use images/ photos/ old paintings just to start me off.

What will tomorrow bring ?

A full year's Dailies

Because this was the last of the year, I had wanted it to be a special one. Mistake to think that because it puts a pressure on you and although I was in the studio most of yesterday afternoon , I didn't complete it. It went through different incarnations and I have had to leave it this morning. Will see when it's dry. I managed to get the backs of my boards painted though for the display at Woodend mill next week.

First layer

Second layer !

Third layer ! Left it to dry !

Well what I massively need to do in the studio is to tidy up, organise, evaluate, decide what to do next.Looking back at the Dailies, I probably have another year's work correcting last years work. That doesn't seem right. Have a rethink.

I had thought though that I would paint some small pieces directly from the Dailies. Try that.

Finished all the backs of the paintings going on show next week at the Woodend mill.

Below are the paintings from today. Felt bereft that I had no Dailies to do !

Last three Dailies omg

Gentle paint today, catching up on the last of the Dailies, savouring the paintings. Had stitches out of my hand so maybe painted a little too much today. Still on sunsets/ sunrises , wanted to do a display of 8 for my Art lounge and also have a display to put up at our local Art studios on 17 th April. They are having a big open studio event and I am one of the guest artists.

These are today's paintings.

A little romantic, but that's fine. Love em really, well, today I love them.Only two Dailies left now ! But I must not start anything else now because I have to get organised for next weekend' s display. By that I mean paint the backs that need doing, put any frames on that need it , do labels etc. I have a 

display of 8 paintings to put up and maybe a big thing will be to select 8 out of the year's work.

Thursday morning...... Painting when I should be doing the prep for my group this afternoon. Well managed the next to the last Daily with the thought that actually there's no way I am stopping doing these. Love it. Very romantic though and I keep telling myself I am not painting skies but rather feelings but he ho perhaps I need to actually acknowledge and research a few skies. I am aware that for a sky I don't get my tones dark enough. Will do sunsets with the Art group next week. 

Love it .... Well love it today .

Reproducing a sunset painting

Right, so someone I gave a painting to for their birthday picked one of the sunset ones that I don't like anymore ( there is an ongoing flipping backwards and forwards between the paintings I like and those I don't ! ) So, I thought that if I painted a few more he might choose another one that actually I do like. With that in mind , I tried ( she says ) to reproduce a sunset painting I do like. This was the one.

What do l like about this one....

The warmth

The scratching out to reveal the under painting

The colours and tones, the pink particularly......

Right, so this morning I put down two coats of a very dark mixed green as an under painting and then roughly re painted the image. This was the result ...... Nothing like the original one ....... I seem to have shifted from paintings with a sunset feel to paintings with a sunrise feel. Research Sunsets/ sunrises.

What do I like about this one......it's gentleness and warmth......perfect for a misty, cold Easter Monday.... 

What could I improve on? ..... Tones are a bit fudged.......it.s all blurred/ out of focus

It reminds me of some of LOriann Signori , research her again, she does a lot of pastels Ughhh to pastels

SUNSETS/ SUNRISES



So researching the colour differences between sunrises and sunsets , there's loads of science out there but , for me, these are the interesting bits of information.
A sunset / sunrise occurs when the top edge of the sun reaches the horizon, hence why dawn appears before the actual sunrise.
The colours in the sunset / sunrise are affected by climate, position and lots of other stuff really. Generally most say that the sunrises are cooler and paler in colour, sunsets being warmer colours and deeper in tone. It's not that simple though , it depends on your eyes too and particles in the sky. Too much science.

Georgeous...... Warm, dreamy, strong landscape. Lovely use of tones. Very feminine ..... Well compared to Richard Whadcock. Lovely.

Finished 99 of the Evening series

Some days the paintings are harder than others ! It has been hard finishing off the 99 in the Evening series.Mmmmm. I researched contemporary abstracted landscapes ( research on Pinterest on the Sunset board ) and looked back at my own Daily paintings and Sunset sketches. So when I come to the paint , they go their own way.

Still not able to wholly do the Dailies, can't hold the big brushes in my hand . Can't wait for stitches out Tuesday.

On the whole, I massively enjoyed the small sunset paintings, Evening series.they will feed into the Dailies and vica versa so I can't move out of them just yet. Not until the Dailies are finished. Can't therefore look at any other art/ ideas until then, for fear it may send me in a different direction !

What did I like about these last ones ;

The built up textures.

The build up of colours

The complex colour mixes of the wet in wet paint

The dark edges 

The dulled colours

The size

The paint

What didn't I like ..... Can't think of anything.

Do they work ? Absolutely !

Try all of them together.......

Tried one Daily painting ( 5 left now ) Still trying to keep in sunsets and what came out was clearly not that but much more of a sunrise . Hmmmmm ! Try again. Maybe need to nudge the tones up and down .

Daily paintings 1 year evaluation

How to evaluate ?
Read my whole blog
Look at all the Daily paintings on Pinterest
Look back at what I wanted to achieve at the start of the project
Look at my whole year's output, what worked etc
Consider what I enjoyed
Consider what I could have done better
Look at how to develop the project

------------------------------
I read my blog from April 2015
I looked at all the Daily paintings on PInterest AND

EVALUATION
The BLOG
The blog was good for me, particularly when it started being an online journal/ diary. It doesn't matter whether anyone else reads it, for now. I enjoyed writing it and intend to carry on. I don't need to develop it at this stage. I don't know what other people think of it, not many people read it or comment on it.

The PAINTINGS
Loved doing them.
Loved the challenge of the Dailies.
Found it hard to get them down to half hour, but did it.
When I started, I had to let them rest for a few days before calling them paintings . Now , I don't.
I dislike about 50 of the 365 paintings and will paint over them , or work back into them. Although,
the ones I don't like change daily.

I love the blending of the paint.
I don't feel the faces fit into the tear.
I couldn't maintain the sketches as well as the paintings.That's ok.
I love the distilled landscapes too.
I used acrylic, oils, pencil, printmaking, pouring.
A lot of the paintings need the backs painting or a frame on.
A lot of them feel romantic, dreamy sometimes too.

GENERALLY
I felt a little pressure when I got behind with the Dailies, understandably.
I love the smell of paint and paint on hardboard.
I felt a little rusty when I had a break of a few days.
I always feel that the muse might desert me.

WHAT DID I WANT TO ACHIEVE ?
I wanted to create a new body of work - tick
I wanted to move my landscape painting along - tick
I wanted to see if I could do a daily painting - tick
I wanted to increase my online presence - tick ( 3,500 followers on pinterest )
I wanted to increase my income from my art - no tick yet.

WHERE TO GO NOW ?

Do what I want for a few weeks then make a decision.
What do I want to do........paint bigger, paint small.

Ideas so far.......
Morph the Daily paintings into , ' instants / half hourly / big sketches/ some other name '

Continue the Dailies working in different sizes ...... Not sure how that would work.... More thought needed.
Apply to commercial galleries - do it !
Etsy shop with my smaller images - nothing to loose , it can't be that hard ( she says )

This was the Daily painting. Very dark green under painting, lots of layers, lots of working back into the layers, used the etching tools to dig out some of the under layers.

Four Dailies together on the charcoal wall.

So, went back to small work to spend a pleasant afternoon, mixing paints and making small 12 cm sq work. Need to have a more systematic approach tomorrow and look specifically at the sunsets that I like.

Mixed paints ...... Colours maybe not as true as they are because it's evening now.the first one is actually the colour in the pot, Daler Rowney Naples yellow, it just doesn't look like any Naples yellow I know. Added in black ( second one ) doesn't look so bad now. Then mixed a navy blue, black and blue.Then mixed a kind of indigo, black, blue and purple. Second to last mixed rose with Naples yellow and finally put black in it. Loved it.love mixing colours.have lots of pots to fill.

These are 73 to 81 in the evening series. What I wanted with this series was; sunset feeling, sunset colours, abstractions. That's what I got but it was hard . Not easy at all.love them though ( well today I do, will I tommorow ? )